Does technology ever frustrate you? It seems like we going
backwards now when it comes to technology. I was over at the seafarer mission
just hours ago, downloaded my email, to read later, then left to sleep before
watch. Well, lo and behold, I turn on the computer and, poof, all my emails are
gone. Just gone.WTF!

Over the winter I was on a shitty boat and a leak from the
deckhead dripped on my computer, frying the keyboard. I guess the computer got
confused with so much whacked keyboard input, and corrupted the hard drive. So
I had to buy a new computer. I went with a trusty brand, a Toshiba, and of
course there was no choice about operating system, so Windows 8, it was.

What a piece of shit ! Both the hardware and software. I
have never had to pay so much attention to ‘mickey mousing’ the operating system
since Windows 95. This hardware is not user friendly and unnecessarily
gimmicky. The keyboard looks cool but is hard to type on resulting in many
missed letters.

The operating system is made for the benefit of Microsoft,
trying to insert itself into every facet of your life, to try to scam a few
more bucks out of you. I get it, they want more profits, they are jealous of
how Apple’s been able to swindle so much more money from their users.But it’s just not those basic tools that we need;
it seems everything is designed to suck you into a void of unproductive, time consuming,
wasteland.

Last year, I create a few websites using different content
management systems (CMS); it’s been the trendy thing for some time. Most
website now use a form of Wordpress, which is a CMS based system. My intentions
were to find a system that would allow me to join the “crowd” and move my
website, created in the early days of the internet as we know it, and modernize
it.

I am realizing that CMS is like my laptop, its looks really
great for the first few minutes, then, you realize what a pain in the ass it
is. It is constantly under spam attack, always needs tweaking, because the endless
security updates are not compatible with the skin or “apps” you’ve installed.
Its non stop !

I was thinking of moving my website to a CMS system, but I
am sooooo happy I did not fall down that shithole. No, I like my little old
simple HTML website, sure I’ve added a few things here and there, but the time
I spend on it now, is actually time producing content. …and time, like many people, is my most
precious commodity.

I believe I have a pretty good record of adapting technology
and making my day more productive. But these days it seems I am wasting so much
time fixing, tweaking, updating, dodging bloatware and scams; and let’s not
forget all these gadgets track and spy on you to boot.

I am fuming because I’ve lost my whole email program,
luckily I just backed it up a few days ago, so I probably just lost a few
emails. But still, technology should not be this painful. It seems now that
technology has become an enslaver; I guess it always was, but at least five
years ago the benefits outweighed the negatives, to me at least.